


Glass

by ellezahuay



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Gen, Heavy Angst, Kinda?, Or At Least I Tried, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 20:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15648000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellezahuay/pseuds/ellezahuay
Summary: What happened after that youkai broke that window all that time ago.(You know? The episode where Natsume kicked a girl because he saw that sneaky, window breaking youkai behind her)(Angst to hopefully fix my writing block)(Edit: Maybe the title's better now. I thought the previous one was kinda finicky. Also changed the warning to mature. Personally don't think that it's mature but better to be safe than sorry.)(Edit 2: Changed some of the words after my friend/proofreader finally finished proofreading it. The proofreader says that teen is okay, so back to teen it goes.)





	Glass

**Author's Note:**

> So like, I wanted to write angst. And so I did this. Trigger warning, since child abuse.

It was dark.

There he sat, darkness covering him like a heavy cloak, the weight pressing down on his shoulders, his vision shrouded by the blackness. He could feel them, watching him from under the inky cover of the darkness, their eyes glinting all around him like small torches, staring at him, into him.

“Liar!” they cried mockingly. “Liar, liar!”

Natsume shuddered and pulled his arms tighter around himself, his skin prickling as they crawled all over him like tiny bugs, small hands tugging at his clothes and pulling at his hair, needles of pain shooting through his scalp as they ran rings around him, taunting and giggling unsettlingly at him.

“Liar!” they chattered, before bursting into laughter, the quiet buzzing from their small wings filling his head like a hoard of flies around a carcass.

A small shaft of light burst into the darkness as the sound of a slamming door entered his ears like an explosion. Blearily, he looked up, a tall figure fuzzily coming into sight, its unruly hair tumbling down its back like a waterfall, the neck of what seemed to be a glass bottle clenched tightly between its fingers. Red. The air reeked of alcohol.

The figure stumbled, then, steadying itself against the door, took another swig. Natsume watched as a majority of the fluid splashed out of the bottle mouth and onto the floor, where it lay still like a pool of moonshine, glowing yellow in the light of the old lamps.

The hands were gone. He vaguely wondered where they went.

The figure’s mouth opened.

“What are you doing here?” it slurred, waving the bottle around. “Why don’t you ever do as I say?”

“You told me to wait…” his throat felt dry, his voice coming out cracked and ill.

“Did I?” The figure laughed drunkenly, before smashing the bottle against the doorframe, the coloured glass shattering like dull fireworks upon contact, raining down on him in shreds. They cut into his skin like small knives, or the sharp bits of rock that he’d sometimes find in his shoes when he changed after gym class. He flinched. It hurt, but with a silent resignation Natsume knew that there was no point in complaining about it. He watched as the small shards bounced off of him and lay on the ground, broken crystals of colour covering the floor. He’d probably have to clean them up later, before someone got hurt. Suzuki-san never seemed to notice these things until too late, after all.

The figure shuddered, and pulled itself upright, its shadow waving to and fro before him.

“What are you looking at, huuh?” it mumbled. “You think I wanted to take you in? Damn brat!”

He cried out as the fist connected with his left jaw and drove him to the ground, the shards of glass like a bed of razors beneath him, jabbing uncomfortably through the thin fabric of his uniform.

Natsume lay still atop the bits of glass, the throbbing pain in his cheek diminishing into a dull ache as he stared at the light reflecting off the sharp edges, shining into his eyes like a spotlight. This always seemed to happen, he mused remorsefully to himself as he looked into the bright light that wavered and shuddered before his eyes. The bad things always happened whenever he was around, to himself, his peers, his foster parents. Always because he could see them, because he could hear their voices. He clenched his fist around the light, the quiet crunch of the glass as he moved like the cobbles of the many roads he had walked on, the sharp sting no longer hurting as much as it would have a few years ago. They hated him, all of them, humans and youkai alike. Because he could see, all the bad things happened, and it hurt the people who couldn’t. A small bead of red welled out from between his fingers, and began dripping onto the crisp strands of the tatami, a flowering stain on the creamy yellow backdrop. Perhaps if this had happened a few years ago, he’d have ended up hating the youkai that put him through all this. But now, there was nothing for him to hate anymore. All that hate and remorse for the youkai, for the people who called him a liar simply because they couldn’t see what he did, all that had been washed out of him years ago, like a stream run dry. It was his own fault for not being able to handle the situation better. The insides of his eyes grew hot. He didn’t mean to let that youkai break the window.

He winced as the hard heel of a shoe rammed into his side, the small sting now a burning sear jabbing into his ribs as the figure stood over him, casting a long dark shadow over the mellow light pooling in from beyond the door.

“Stop your yapping!” he coughed uncontrollably as the painful jabs came again and again, his vision blurring even more, his nose filled with nothing but that sticky, oozing scent, permeating his mind and filling his head with white noise. “Good for nothing piece of trash! Coming into MY home and ruining MY life with your stupid nonsense!”

He felt something grab a fistful of his shirt and drag him upright, the tight cloth around his neck choking him like a noose as he was forced up onto his knees. He felt ill, the churning feeling in his gut increasing and rising up into his throat, his skin tingling hot and cold sporadically. The figure grabbed him by the roots of his hair and pulled his head up, its hands cold and rough. He stared into its eyes, every angry line etched into its face like a trench in a barren landscape, the dark circles under its eyelids like the bruises that reminded him of every time he grew careless. No. It wasn’t her fault. She had every right to be angry. For imposing upon her and causing trouble. Every time.

“Why did you have to come here?” it wailed, its eyes dark and wild looking, the stench in its breath puffing out in agitated gusts. “We were doing fine until you came! Filching off our money and our home and our food,” it was crying now, tears streaming down its drunken face like rivers. “And making every single day like a damn nightmare!”

He flinched, every word that cut into him more agonising than the glass, the beatings, and the hunger. They stabbed into his chest in a torturous ache, as if a knife was twisting around and around in his heart, hurting more the more he thought about them and realised that they were true. That she was right.

“Why are YOU crying?” it sniffed, its expression contorted with disgust and loathing. “You don’t know what it feels like to have to deal with something that was never your responsibility to begin with!”

He instinctively curled up as he was thrown onto the ground again, huddled amid the glass as the warm liquid dripped down his face and onto the floor, mixing with the small specs of blood that were already there and forming wet splotches on the ground. He barely heard the tramping footsteps as the figure stormed back out, the sound of the refrigerator door opening and slamming as it drank and drank.

For a moment, there was silence.

Cautiously, the hands returned, as did the telltale buzz of their wings, but they no longer laughed. He could feel their fingers trace the path of his wounds, their whispering like wind amid the blankness that filled his head. Stop. He wanted it to stop. All of this. He just wanted to curl up and die.

“Go away…” his voice cracked. “I don’t want to see you any more.”

The whispering halted, and all of a sudden, he was alone again.

*****

“Takashi-kun,” Natsume glanced up from where he was sitting on the floor of his new room as Touko-san popped her head inside, her eyes smiling with that kind gaze that she seemed to always have. “Dinner’s ready!”

He nodded silently and got up as she led him down to the kitchen where Shigeru-san was already waiting, three sets of tableware placed neatly on the table in front of him.

Touko-san hustled him into his seat, and filled the bowl in front of him with a generous portion of rice, her hands warm and gentle as she patted him on the head before fetching a bottle of sake for Shigeru-san. The air smelled nice, the sort of homely scent that Natsume hadn’t experienced for a long, long time. It felt kind, safe.

“Takashi-kun?” Touko-san glanced at him, her kind, smiling eyes crinkled up with concern. “Why are you crying? Is the food not to your liking?”

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and smiled.

“No. It’s delicious.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pacing is too fast, similes getting boring, redundant words, not enough feelings described, narrative generally flat, abrupt endings, grammar mistakes probably present.  
> Worse than the stuff I used to be able to write :/  
> The words don't come to me like they used to.  
> Edit: My proofreader gave their opinion. I'll let you judge on how true it is:  
> "The second part is kinda too short but then it’s alright in every single kind of way but considering the ratio of sad to happy this is unforgivable but then this part warms your heart like the CO2 in fizzy soda so kill me now please thank you Natsume deserves everything in this world thank you"


End file.
